


Build a Better Blow Job (and the World Will Beat You Off At Your Door)

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Bets, Demisexuality, Fanart, First Time, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Pre-Canon, Preseries, Reading Aloud, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:19:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College student Nathan Ingram makes a bet to build a perfect sex toy. He needs his friend Harold's help to build it. Except Harold's never had sex. And then, shenanigans.</p><p>Beware of Headcanonly-Texan!Nathan. Beware of skeevy sex shops and skeevy shopkeepers. Beware of Mortified!Harold.</p><p>The art is credit the amazing Togsos (togsos.livejournal.com). I am indebted to her for a stunning, gorgeous amount of detail, nuance, and general cleverness. Be sure to click on the art to see it full-size!</p><p><b>ADDITIONALLY!</b> <a href="http://mr-finch.tumblr.com">Mr-Finch</a> has been exceedingly kind and actually did a reading/recording of the uh, climax of the action so to speak. So if you want to hear a sexy British accent reading about blowjobs, that can be found <a href="http://soundcloud.com/petraichor/voice-recording-lol">here</a>. Eeeeeeee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Harry, I need your help."

Nathan's announcement, delivered as he flung their dorm room's door open and waltzed inside, wasn't particularly irregular. Harold Wren, or at least the student who called himself Harold Wren, grimaced in answer, and didn't lift his eyes from the innards of the Altair 8800 and the delicate work of soldering two components together.

"I told you I'm not writing any more of your essays for you."

"It's not an assignment," Nathan said with an eye-roll that could be heard if not seen, moving to the other side of their cramped dorm room. The tall young man's bed creaked as he threw his lanky frame down upon it. "It's building something. Electronics and stuff. Hands-on."

This was interesting enough to merit a glance up. Harold gave Nathan a narrow-eyed gaze through his thick glasses, then a short nod before looking back down to his work.

"I'm listening...."

"I need you to help me build a sex toy."

The soldering iron slipped from his fingers and bounced inside the assembly case. _"Shit!"_ Harold yelped, grabbing for it, nearly burning his fingers in the process as he struggled get the iron out before the hot tip bumped against any of the completed circuit boards and ruined them.

He shot Nathan a glare once he'd retrieved the offending object. _"What?"_

Ingram's amusement was palpable. The other student lounged on his bed on his belly, chin propped on his hands, smiling. "I said I need you to help me build a sex toy. Don't drop that again."

"I'll throw it at you instead. What are you _talking about?"_

"It ain't that complex a sentence, Harry. I need you. To help me build. A sex toy."

He turned the iron off, set it down carefully to one side, and rubbed at his forehead. Life with Nathan Ingram was many things, but it wasn't boring. Some days he wished to God it was.

"I have no idea what put this into your mind and I don't want to know. No."

"I went out drinking last night with James William Whitfield the _Third--"_ (Nathan let a little Texas slip into his voice as he drawled the name of one of the campus's other rich boys) "--and we got ourselves making a bet--"

"I am _pretty certain_ I just said I didn't want to know."

"--about innovative science versus tried-and-true commercial solutions and the respective superiority of each across all fields," Nathan continued, completely ignoring his interruption. "Real intellectual stuff, you'd have loved it."

Harold took a deep breath and pinched at the bridge of his nose. "Not seeing the connection."

"Well, I was saying how computers are gonna revolutionize everything," Nathan grinned, one foot kicking in the air lazily. He knew he had Harold's interest now, by merit of mentioning technology, and just waited him on out.

Harold knew it too, but huffed. "….and?" he said finally.

"And _he_ said 'not everything', and I said, yeah, everything, and _he_ said, 'there will never be a machine that can suck my dick like a whore does'."

Harold stared. He hoped he wasn't blushing; he had a sneaking suspicion he might be. He looked back down to the Altair to hide it in case he was. "Oh, yes, very intellectual discussion indeed," he muttered, wondering not for the first time how the hell he got into these conversations.

"Well you gotta understand, this was about eight shots of Jim Bean in," Nathan answered cheerfully. He rolled over on his bed to lace his hands behind his head. "Anyhow I told him he was wrong and that I'd prove it. Made a bet of it."

Harold groaned under his breath, leaning one elbow on the desk that was covered with the detritus of his work. Nathan. Nathan Ingram was how the hell he got into these conversations.

He tried to save things, steer the conversation another direction as he reached for the soldering iron again. "I don't understand why you spend time with that neanderthal."

"Because my daddy knows his daddy, and he will most likely become a Captain of Industry even if he can't find his ass with a flashlight, and it is Damn Well Advisable for me and him to 'get on'."

Damned if he couldn't hear Nathan's father's voice saying it; Nathan's imitation was eerily close to the old bastard's. Harry sighed acknowledgment of the social requirements the Ingram name carried with it. So much better to be unknown, to be a ghost in the system, in his own estimation...

"So, anyway, we have a month to build an artificial mouth--"

"For the love of-- _no_ , Nathan, I said _no_ already," Harold exclaimed, nearly dropping the iron again. He shoved his glasses up his nose, as they were starting to slide down, and shot Nathan another glare.

"Aw, come on. Pretty please with cherries on top. I can't do it on my own."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have _made the bet."_

"I figured you'd reckon it was fun! Look, I've got a thousand bucks riding on this, I really don't want to lose."

This time he did drop the iron, stared gaping at his friend for several seconds until he darted a hand down to retrieve the tool once more.

"You bet a _thousand dollars?_ Are you _insane?_ That's a quarter of our yearly _tuition_ , for God's sake--" Harold started, before sputtering to the helpless stop he usually encountered when confronted with the Ingram family fortune, and the huge gap in life experiences between himself and his best friend.

Nathan didn't _pay_ his own tuition. What the hell did he care? Harold shook his head and tried to think about the computer he was assembling instead-- the computer kit he'd bought with the dollars he'd saved from months of tutoring people he loathed.

He could have bought _two_ of the kits for the Altair 8800 with a thousand dollars, and some 4K dynamic memory cards as well.

Nathan just regarded him steadily from the bed, head craned backwards to keep him in view.

"Like I said, eight shots of whiskey... If you help me with it I'll split the grand with you."

...it was embarrassing, how tempting that was. Harold sucked in a little breath and stared blankly down at the circuit board he'd been working on.

Most of his actual tuition was covered by scholarships he'd managed to finagle, but tuition was not the only expense you encountered when putting yourself through college. Money and the lack thereof was always a consideration; tutoring the simplest way (well, simplest _legal_ way) to get it, but not his favorite activity by a long shot.

Five hundred dollars would get the 4K memory card kit for the Altair, and expander cards, and the audio tape interface, and the ASCII keyboard.... and pay for subscriptions to Popular Mechanics and Dr. Dobb's.... and the cafeteria meal plan for the next semester.

He did math in his head. Hm. Probably not the meal plan.

"…seventy/thirty split, if I'm going to be building this for you," he said warily, watching Nathan from the corner of his eye.

Nathan accepted the loss of a theoretical two hundred dollars without so much as a blink, grinning instead. "Deal! Announcing the collaboration of Ingram and Wren! Together, we shall revolutionize the blow job!"

Harold winced. He was definitely red-faced now. "I am _pretty sure_ they can hear you on the entire floor, could you _maybe_ refrain from shouting?"

"Don't be such a prude!" Nathan laughed, pushing himself upright again. "Okay, I've gotta line up some guys to be the objective testers for this once it's built. And some hookers to provide the alternative. No, Whitfield should have to hire the hookers, that way he can't say I got cut-rate or anything..."

Harold was pretty sure he was getting redder with every time Nathan said _hookers_ , and was vastly irritated with himself for this. It was just a word. It was nothing more vulgar than half of anything else most of the other male students on campus talked about.

Neanderthals.

"...and _you_ have a month to make an amazing synthetic mouth. I told him we'd be able to replicate human body temp, and moisture and suction, so, you know, go wild-- I'll cover materials costs--"

Nathan was bouncing to his feet, already headed for the door, while Harold sat there frozen, soldering iron forgotten in one hand, his jaw slowly dropping open as it sunk in what he had actually agreed to build and as Nathan rattled off the hitherto-unknown specifications.

"Wait--" he croaked, but it was too late. The door was shut, the room suddenly much quieter for the lack of one Nathan Ingram.

"... _shit_ ," Harold Wren said with feeling to the empty dorm room and the half-finished computer before him.

****

Step one, of course, had to be the gathering of information on a topic with which he was unfamiliar.

He took a deep breath as he studied the door of the building, from a safe spot, on the other side of the street. He would have much preferred to be going into the bookstore on his side of the street, rather than the dingy-looking little shop that had lurid red lights blinking in the window and a silhouette of a woman's nude body plastered against said window and the curtains firmly drawn. A sign that he would guess had been hand-lettered proclaimed the store to be the oh-so-cleverly-named "CUM-BRIDGE".

Troglodytes.

Several more deep breaths. This was stupid. He'd run away from home several years prior, taken care of himself, navigated the fabrication of a past life and application and acceptance to one of the most prestigious schools in the country. He was extremely intelligent. Surely he could maneuver a tawdry little transaction in a tawdry little shop.

Surely.

Harold crossed the street and gingerly pushed the door open.

It was dark; he squinted through his glasses as his eyes took a moment to adjust. There was a smell in the room that he couldn't readily identify but it wasn't pleasant, it was... sort of _stale_ and close. Music with a heavy bass beat was playing, somewhere.

His eyes adjusted. It wasn't an improvement. The cluttered little shop was dimly lit. He didn't know what he'd expected-- organization, at the very least-- but it certainly wasn't present. The merchandise seemed crammed onto shelves ill-suited for display, in no order he could see.

Things with feathers. Things with.... with breasts. Handcuffs. Magazines with improbably-endowed women on their covers. A shelf topped with a number of erect penises made out of what he assumed was some sort of rubber, except they were all grotesquely oversized (they were, weren't they? Good _God,_ nobody was actually equipped like that, were they?).

There was a greasy-looking man behind the counter. He had a _Playboy_ open in front of him, and did not so much as look up from it or address Harold in any way. Harold thought he was grateful for that.

He slunk away from the door and into the tight little aisles of the shop, squinting as he started his search. It was just as well the shop was dim. His face was hot with the absurd indignity of what he was doing, and where he was.

God, what if one of the other students he knew saw him coming out of here? What if a _professor_ saw him? And what the _hell_ was _that_ suppoooo--

\--artificial vagina. Right. He put the package back down incredibly quickly, then felt the need to wipe his hand on his trousers.

Nathan. This was all Nathan Ingram's fault. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

Mouths, mouths, he was looking for _mouths..._ He tugged at his shirt's collar, which was suddenly very constricting, as he scanned the shelves, trying not to let his eyes linger on anything in particular.

Big, red lips-- bingo-- he grabbed at the oddly-large-for-just-a-mouth box and pulled it from the shelf to discover he was holding what the box proclaimed in rounded letters to be _THE ORIGINAL LOVE-DOLL, "JUDY" – YOUR INFLATABLE FUN "COMPANION"._

"Oh my god," Harold muttered under his breath, and shoved the thing back into its sordid recess. He wiped his sweaty hands on his shirtfront reflexively, took a deep breath, and resumed the search.

It was an education, to say the least. Harold learned of the existence of various things he had never known were _things._ Nipple clamps, for instance. Pasties. Cock.... cock rings _(Why?! What was the purpose?)_. A Wartenburg neurological pinwheel _(Why and why again, shouldn't that be in a medical supplies store?)_. Edible candy underwear _(Oh god that can't be hygienic)_.

A box that proclaimed itself to be a Clone-A-Willy kit.

Erotic dice.

A lubricant launcher.

This last, Harold studied in a surreal state that was half discomfort, and half attempting to visualize the logistics. Looked like a syringe. A brief study of the package's text gave him enthusiastic exhortations to: _LOAD IT AND SHOOT IT! ACCURATE AS YOU NEED TO BE!_

Was it a sex toy or a guided missile? Dear God.

"Slick's on the next aisle," said a bored male voice, and he nearly dropped the item in his hands, head snapping up to seek out the voice. "That thing'll only hold about two ounces though. You doin' anal or pussy?"

The shopkeeper was standing at the head of the aisle, magazine dangling from one hand, looking like every horrible mental preconception he had of such sleazy individuals.

"Wh-what?" Harold managed to squeak. His face was hot as an overclocked processor.

The man rolled his eyes a little. "You fucking someone in the ass or the pussy? You need more lube for the first. Or--" and he paused, head tilted to one side, giving Harold a once-over that he was extremely and definitely not comfortable with, "--you catching?"

What? Harold practically shoved the 'lubricant launcher' back onto the shelf before his fingers could rebel and chuck it at the man in self-defense. "No-- neither-- none of those-- I'm not getting _that_ ," he blurted.

"Suit yourself," the man said with a jerk of one shoulder and turned to head back behind the counter.

Harold weighed the benefits and drawbacks of asking the location of artificial mouths, and therefore getting out of the shop quicker, versus the fact that he very much did not want to actually talk to this person.

He could hunt a little longer on his own.

Sadly, he was pretty sure he had exhausted the options on this aisle. Harold edged around to the other side, which put him in fuller view of the shopkeeper, to his dismay. He forced himself to keep his eyes on the merchandise and not worry about whether the dark-eyed man was watching him.

Not that the merchandise was any refuge from discomfort. Now he was face to face with the line of rubber phalluses. ( _Phalli_ , his mind corrected.) Harold stared despite himself. The proportions varied from what he supposed was 'normal' to, well, 'ridiculous'; the colors were garish to say the least.

 _BIG AND BLACK – THE NATURAL NEGRO_ (Oh God, really? _Really?_ Apparently racism was alive and well in the sex industry) sat next to an off-white penis that looked fairly tame in comparison until he saw the packaging, which advertised that HIPPY-COCK! would "reveal it's cosmic secrets" under the power of a black light (not included). Harold wasn't sure if the concept or the punctuation errors bothered him more.

God, the next three all had _testes,_ each vein and bit of skin reproduced in completely unnecessary detail. He stared in morbid, bemused fascination. This shop was _much_ too close, and warm, and the combination of the two were making him sweat.

"You looking for a biggie?"

Huh? "Huh?"

"I said, are you looking for a big one-- I got a fourteen-incher in the back." The man snickered at his own unintentional innuendo.

It took Harold's helpless brain a few seconds to process what had actually been said to him. Fourteen inches. Was that-- was that even _possible_ \-- how would that _fit_ \-- not that he, you know, devoted any thought to anything like that, God no. _No._

" _No,_ " he said, attempting the quelling tones that had shut up a few bullies along his route to MIT. Behind him the shopkeeper just sighed.

"You tell me what you want and buy it, sooner I can get back to quality time with Miss December."

Again it took a few seconds to figure out what the man was referring to; when it clicked his brain recoiled in disgust. _Where had that man's hands been when he'd entered the store?_ Ew. Ew. Ick. Harold viciously scrawled a mental note to make sure not to make any sort of physical contact when he paid for his purchase.

If he found his purchase.

The man was still talking. "If you're looking for a peep room, we don't got one. There's a video cubicle in the back though. A buck for five minutes."

He didn't even want to try and figure out what that was referring to. Harold took a deep breath.

"I'm looking for a-- for-- a--" (Oh God, just say it.) "--a mouth. An _artificial_ \-- mouth. S-something that, uh, that sim-simulates... oral sex."

"Betty Jean's on the end-cap there, buddy. Don't got Billy Joe in stock."

Again, his mind wasn't going to analyze any of that. Harold edged to the endcap, where he found a few small boxes with an illustration of a platinum blonde woman licking a lollipop. There was advertising text on this box as well. He didn't take the time to read it.

Harold grabbed one blindly, hurried to the counter, and tossed it down. "That. Please. How much?"

The disgusting man was smirking. "Seven-seventy-eight."

Harold threw a ten at him, and mumbled a _keep-the-change_ because he definitely didn't want to take back any money the man had touched.

He fled. 'Betty Jean' crammed into a pocket of his jacket, ears burning, and resolutely trying to wipe images of the HIPPY-COCK! and everything else from his head.

[ ](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/dien/1096107/700074/700074_original.jpg)


	2. Chapter 2

In the dorm room, Harold went through a several-step process before inspecting his new acquisition. One of his neckties was looped and hung onto the doorknob on the hall side, the door securely shut. On reflection, his desk's chair was shoved against the door as well, braced to prevent entry. He seriously debated using the desk too, but it was heavy and there were a lot of things he'd probably have had to clear off the top first. For the eighteenth time he wished the rooms had locks. 

Next, the window's battered blinds, scrupulously drawn shut. Years of abuse by college students had rendered them gapped in places, so Harold grabbed a towel and a tee shirt and clothespins and covered each hole. Their dorm room was on the fourth floor but that didn't mean someone from one of the buildings across the quad, at an equal or higher elevation and with possibly a telescope, might not be able to see what was going on. 

Only when these safeguards were in place did he sit down on his bed's edge and open the flimsy cardboard box.

The thing inside was... approximately cylindrical, a floppy pocket of unnaturally pink-orange rubber with one end molded into the facsimile of a wide-open pair of ludicrously full and red lips. Cartoonish, really. 

He stared at it, poked a finger into the 'mouth' to encounter a two-inch slab of also-red rubber with ridges on it that was, presumably, meant to simulate a tongue. Further exploration resulted in the discovery of more bumps down in the... throat.

"That isn't titillating, that's the _mumps,"_ Harold protested, not that anybody was there to care. 

He poked at it a few more minutes in ongoing morbid fascination and, he had to admit, procrastination. Shoddy manufacturing-- the rubber didn't look too durable, for one thing, and the dye on the lips and tongue was uneven. He'd paid ten dollars for something that had probably cost fifty cents to produce. Ugh.

Harold retrieved alcohol wipes from his desk drawer and wiped 'Betty Jean' out very thoroughly, three times on the inside and once on the outside, then stalled for a little bit longer by reading the box. 

_Hours of Fun – Travels Well – Easy to Clean – Betty Jean's Always In the Mood!_

There were no directions, he observed, and then promptly felt a little foolish for hoping there might be. It was fucking a rubber mouth. It wasn't complicated. Hundreds of idiots probably managed it every day. 

"Right, then," Harold muttered to himself, and unfastened his belt. 

Much as he found the prospect of sex with most people he knew to be completely unappealing, he wasn't exactly some naïf when it came to the act of getting off. He knew the mechanics and he knew his own right hand could execute them perfectly well, thanks. It was _enjoyable_ enough, sure-- there were sound evolutionary reasons for why orgasm was pleasurable-- but he'd found the general obsession with sex displayed by apparently every other male under fifty to be, well. A little repugnant. 

He ate when he was hungry. When masturbation was a need, he did that too. But he didn't run around trying to consume every cheeseburger in a thirty-mile radius, which to Harold's thinking summed up the attitude of boys in high school and now other young men in college. Like a pack of dogs, ugh.

Nathan... Nathan had a lot of sex, with what seemed to be an ever-rotating list of 'girlfriends'. Nathan was his friend, and Nathan was actually _smart_ , more so than he let on to most, and he respected Nathan-- he did-- and he struggled to reconcile his general disdain for the sex-obsessed around him with the fact that Nathan, his friend, chased women too and walked around grinning after getting laid, which happened with enough frequency that Harold idly wondered at times how Nathan ever got anything the hell done. 

Harold sighed. Contemplating the libido of college students, even the particular college student who'd gotten him into this mess, wasn't getting this over with. He got the Vaseline out of his desk drawer. 

The rubber mouth hung in his hand, garish lips parted in that vapid 'O'. This was stupid. This was... _demeaning,_ although he wasn't sure to whom, exactly. 

It wasn't like 'Betty Jean' was being exploited. She was just rubber. 

Harold undid his trousers and pushed down his briefs. He got some Vaseline onto his fingers, and took himself in hand, and started stroking, looking up to study the acoustic tiles of the ceiling as he did so.

One benefit of waiting until you were actually already horny to try and masturbate was that your body was eager to get there, he realized quickly. Not so at the moment. If anything his penis seemed reluctant. It was that caricature of too-red lips waiting for him, maybe, or his general frustration and distaste for this whole project. Harold frowned at the ceiling.

It was simple biology: he didn't _need_ to be in the mood for it, the penis responded to stimulation regardless. Right? He knew what his cock liked-- fingers curled loosely around himself, like so, for the build-up, sliding back and forth with the benefit of the Vaseline, thumb dragging across his glans to work the nerves in his tip. Moderate pace, until he got hard, and then he'd speed up, close his fingers more tightly around himself, squeeze in time with the rhythm. It had always worked before. 

There was a crack in one of the ceiling tiles. He traced it with his eyes and then played the time-killing game of projecting constellations onto the randomized holes of the acoustic tiles, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor and the W over there would work as an inverted Cassiopeia...

"Come on," he muttered down at his groin without taking his eyes off the ceiling. "This is _research,_ stop being squeamish."

No particular response from his limp shaft. Harold sighed. He needed... something to think about, apparently, other than constellations. _Fantasy_ material, for Turing's sake. 

He knew Nathan kept adult magazines under his mattress, like some living embodiment of a stereotype.

He hesitated. He bit his lip. He doubted Nathan would mind, exactly-- could, in fact, all too easily picture an airy 'shoot, go ahead, my favorite's the October centerfold'-- but.... eehhn. 

After another minute of studying the ceiling and finding his mind wandering from Orion to quadratic equations, Harold admitted his current plan wasn't working and got to his feet. He doubted they'd be particularly effective but it was an avenue to try, at least. 

The magazines-- carefully fished out with his non-Vaselined hand-- were right where expected, and were the titles he'd expected too: predominantly Playboys, a Penthouse, a few issues of Hustler. Harold grabbed two then retreated back to his own bed. 

He got back to work, his free hand turning pages in the Playboy.

Seven minutes later he'd gotten bogged down reading the interview with Barbara Streisand in the magazine. It wasn't terribly interesting, but it was more interesting than the centerfold. The excerpt from Irwin Shaw was more interesting than either and he forgot about what he was supposed to be doing while reading that. He came back to himself with a guilty start to recognize he was sitting on his bed with one hand motionless on his soft cock and his attention entirely absorbed by the non-dirty part of a dirty magazine.

The Hustler wasn't any better. It was in fact drastically worse, since it had less articles, and the more explicit pictures of women engaged in coitus left him, at best, vaguely disappointed in Nathan's taste. Or lack thereof. 

He gave up. Harold grimaced as he wiped his fingers clean of Vaseline. Pointless and stupid and now he felt dirty, awkward, embarrassed-- and he hadn't even managed to get anything _done_. The whole idea had been ludicrous from the start. The wadded-up Kleenex was tossed into the trash.

He took the magazines back over to Nathan's bed, lifted up the mattress to return them to their not-especially-good hiding place. He'd have to tell Nathan the bargain was off. At least he was only out ten dollars, and a chunk of dignity...

The magazines hit the others still there with a little thwap of slick paper on slick paper. Harold started to lower the mattress-- and then paused, blinking.

There was something sliding around beneath the mattress pad. By the shape, also a magazine, but not one that had been with the others.

Harold had very little interest in dirty magazines, as he'd just proven once again to himself. But he did have both a keen interest in, and a sharp sense for, secrets.

 _Nathan_ didn't have any secrets. Nathan was all broad open-book smiles at everyone, Nathan was expansive and gregarious where Harold was miserly with his past and with his truths. 

He ran his tongue over his teeth, knowing that he'd already made his decision, really. Then he slipped a hand in between the elastic of the mattress pad and the mattress itself and dug out whatever Nathan had thought deserved its own hiding hole. 

_Physique Pictorial,_ said the title. There was very little other text on the cover. It was dominated by a black-and-white image of a muscular blond man staring into the middle distance, one hand clenched in a fist at his belly. Above his completely uncovered cock. 

Harold stared down at it. His brows had climbed to somewhere well above his glasses, near his hairline. It wasn't so much the sight of the naked man-- there'd been naked men in a few of the Hustler pictures, having sex with the women-- or the lavish attention of the camera on the model's sun-kissed skin and broad shoulders. Harold didn't find the sight of the nude male body _particularly_ interesting, he didn't think (and it was a possibility he had considered, when first realizing he didn't have the same interest in girls as other boys his age). 

No. It was the fact that _Nathan_ had this. That Nathan owned it. That Nathan hid it away in a place where it wasn't supposed to be seen, as he had never bothered hiding the existence of the girly mags. 

Did-- did Nathan _masturbate_ to this? Nathan? Nathan Ingram? Nathan of the open-book smiles and the rotating cast of pretty girlfriends?

Harold was no longer thinking about quadratic equations, or constellations.

He held his breath as he opened the cover, half-expecting to see a scrawled note there in Nathan's handwriting that said _GOTCHA!_ and to be surprised with the flash of a camera's bulb. No, nothing-- nothing other than more photographs, a publisher's frontpage... 

He flipped through the magazine, standing there by Nathan's bed, lips pursed, eyes darting over each picture. They were suddenly interesting: not because of the muscles or the poses or the stretches of bare skin or the often-ridiculous props, but because of the knowledge that Nathan had looked at these pictures.

Of course he had looked at the others too, the girls holding lollipops or lounging in fields. Yes. But that was different, because Nathan didn't care who knew about that, because that was _normal,_ expected, that was what Nathan Ingram could shrug off with a grin and the world would let him with an indulgent _'Boys will be boys...'_

But this-- did Nathan slide a chair up before the door as insurance, just as he had, before digging out this particular magazine from its hiding place? Did Nathan cover the gaps in the window shades? Did Nathan look guilty as he turned the pages-- did Nathan start at each footstep in the hall? 

Did anyone else know?

Secret knowledge was intoxicating. Being able to work wizardry with a handful of components and a soldering iron, build a computer from parts as probably only a handful of the other students on campus could do, was something that Harold enjoyed being able to do very much. This tasted a little bit like that, except that the answer to the question was _No._ Nobody else knew. 

That made it better. 

Harold retreated to his bed barely aware he was doing so. He sat down again, turned back to the front page of the magazine, and started with the first page once more. 

Which was Nathan's favorite? Did he like the man on the cover, who in Harold's opinion looked just a bit like Nathan himself? Did Nathan have a narcissistic streak? Or did he seek out a different photo in the magazine? Were any of the pages more dog-eared than the others? He studied the magazine itself as much as the pictures. 

Nathan Ingram was from Texas. He'd met Nathan's father, once-- a man composed of boot leather and Havana cigars-- a man who'd given his son's roommate a very dismissive look and said, when Harold was technically out of the room, _Well, I suppose you'll need people to do your book-keepin', son._

Jack Ingram would not have _liked_ that his son had a magazine full of naked, muscular men beneath his mattress. 

That also made it better. 

Harold turned through the pages with his mind racing, processing, revising a good deal of what he thought he knew about Nathan Ingram. 

Did Nathan sit on the bed's edge, like this, when he looked through _Physique Pictorial?_ Or did he lie flat on his back, magazine held before his face with one hand and other hand on his erection? Or did he do it face down, hips driving into a pillow and the magazine laid flat on the bed for him to look at?

...did Nathan ever have sex with men? Was it fantasy only-- did this magazine represent something of which Nathan was far too wary, perhaps even ashamed, to ever it let it progress beyond pictures? Or did Nathan have encounters with handsome men just like he did pretty girls? Were any of Nathan's many friends on campus-- the football players and the rowing crew and the business majors-- more than friends? 

There were so many interesting questions. Harold only half-noticed when his free hand drifted back onto his cock, and forgot entirely about 'Betty Jean' and 'research', his attention swallowed by the sleek bodies on the pages before him, and in wondering which of them Nathan liked best. 

****

It took a couple of days to work up to Betty Jean. Those precious hours of privacy when Nathan was in class and he himself was not, wasted on this project, since Nathan _did_ keep asking him how it was going. 

Getting hard wasn't so much the problem; things would go just fine with hand and Vaseline and-- yes-- a few glances at the pictures of _Physique_ , which each time then had to be carefully returned to Nathan's mattress (it was possible that making sure he returned it to the exact same place and position it had been in was of more interest to him than the pictures)-- up until the point he had to stop the rhythm he was setting and grab for the stupid, stupid toy instead. 

It became a little more grotesque each time he looked at it until he had to consciously remind himself that the overdone lips were not actually _smirking;_ either way it never took more than a few thrusts into the rubber 'mouth' for his erection to start flagging, and then frustration started kicking in, annoyance, all the initial emotions that had made this unpleasant to begin with. At that point it was pretty much a lost cause trying to stay hard. 

He had to believe actual blowjobs were better than this, because the sensations of putting his cock into the fake mouth were not really all that pleasant. The tacky rubber gave in places he didn't want it to and dug in unexpectedly rigid in others. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't comfortable, and it felt ridiculous, and the Vaseline tended to gloop down in the bottom and cleaning the toy out had to be done using one of the bathroom sinks and that was also an exercise in mortification. And the lips were still bright red, and cartoonish, and pathetic. 

Five days after buying it, after the last attempted research session which wound up with him lying on his back on his bed, disgruntled, unsatisfied, sweaty, and aware that now he had to move the chair again and uncover the window again and hide the garish toy under his shirt on his way to the dorm restroom to wash it out again, Harold decided that was quite enough. 

He got out the box he still had, stuffed the toy back into it, and tossed it into the trashcan by his desk before returning the room to rights. 

He figured that by this point he knew what a blowjob _shouldn't_ be, at least. 

This would all have been well and good except that he forgot to empty the trash can immediately, or at least to throw more trash on top of it, and Nathan saw the box. 

Harold was working on the Altair again, with a vengeance: his own hobbies had been paused for this nonsense and he was firmly devoting an evening to his computer and not his friend's inane bets. Nathan had breezed in from his last class of the day, tossed some books down on the bed, and come on over to peer over his shoulder and ask about what he was doing.

He didn't usually mind this, because Nathan wasn't an idiot, and understood a fair amount about what he was doing, and what he didn't understand Nathan would ask about; but more importantly Nathan would listen to his answers and be duly impressed with how damned clever he was.

So it went today-- Nathan asked what he was soldering that _there_ for, and Harold explained he was adding a secondary clock generator that resonated at a higher frequency than the one shipped with the Altair. Nathan mostly kept up-- _To make the processor run faster?_ \-- and he nodded, yes, and Nathan whistled low and Harold was secretly gratified and pleased. 

And then Nathan let out a laugh, peering down into the trash can, and reached down and pulled the box out, to Harry's everlasting horror. 

"Checking out the competition?" Nathan asked, casual as if he were asking _Can I borrow a jacket?_ (not that any of Harold's would have fit him), while Harry gaped and grabbed at the air and twitched with the urge to knock the box back out of his hand. He flopped mentally around like a fish on the shore of a lake as recognition passed over Nathan's features-- recognition that the box in his hand wasn't _empty_ , wasn't just light cardboard.

"—well shit, you threw it away? Must not have been very good," Nathan snickered.

Harry pondered physics. If he could hit Nathan with sufficient force in the back of the head, Nathan would go forward and break the window and fall out of it and drop four stories to the ground, that was forty feet, impacting at a final speed of roughly 16 meters per second (squared) after one-point-six seconds of acceleration, which would maybe be enough to _SHUT HIM UP._

Unfortunately, Nathan weighed... what, about 80 kilograms? Without a sufficient force multiplier, Harold doubted his ability to generate an adequate whack upside-the-head.

Murder was reluctantly shelved. Which meant he had to try and do words instead. 

"Put-- God-- stop-- Jesus Nathan don't-- _no Don't OPEN IT_ drop it just put it- drop it back in the trash god stop _touching it_ \--"

Nathan looked at him, wry and amused, but maybe the incoherent panic on his face said _something_ eloquent since after a second Nathan's hand opened and the box, and its terrible contents (that he'd never even _cleaned out_ ), dropped back into the trash can with a _thunk_.

Nathan was still grinning, broad and white and he really, really needed to be pushed out a window, it would do him so much _good_ \-- 

"So what's the verdict, how's it measure up against the real thing?"

Flop, flop, flop went his brain on the banks of Lake Ingram. Harold opened and shut his mouth several times, miserably aware that his body was failing him yet again with a treacherous, intense blush. There was something cutting and conversation-ending that he could probably say, if he could just think of the words...

And again he watched recognition-- realization-- cross over Nathan's face, as Nathan, who regrettably was not an idiot, translated his speechless, red-faced embarrassment. 

"...you... oh, you haven't ever..."

He finally managed to remember proper English. " _Yes_ , Nathan, how very astute of you, you're correct, I _haven't_. Hope you're prepared to lose that thousand dollars after all," Harold said in tones as cold as he could muster, "because right now research has not been promising."

He did not feel that he could look at Nathan. Harold stared furiously into the guts of the Altair. Secondary clock generator. That was what he was working on. A computer. Not a sordid, stupid, humiliating sex toy. Where had he put his soldering iron? Oh, there it was, down in the bottom of the case-- he must have dropped it in horror at some point. He fished it out carefully. 

Nathan was silent behind him. If he was still there behind him. Harold tensed his shoulders in preparation against a teasing comment-- against Nathan's awful, thoughtless, good-natured amusement.

"….you haven't done it at all, have you?" Nathan's voice asked, soft, not the audible smirk he'd expected. 

The teasing would have been bad, but Nathan's pity was exponentially worse. 

Harold drew a deep breath, closing his eyes as he ran through prime numbers in his head. _(1-2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23--)_

"I've had better things to do than chase girls around like an animal in heat," he snapped. "I suppose that's hard for you to wrap your brain around, that someone might be interested in things _other_ than sex, but all the same--"

"Harry." Nathan didn't raise his voice. Nathan very rarely raised his voice in Harold's experience. Nathan very rarely needed to-- people responded to his jokes and his interest, and everyone wanted to be Nathan Ingram's friend. Even _he_ had wanted that-- all his commitment to invisibility, all his little rules and paranoia, but the first time he'd felt the sun of Nathan Ingram's smile he'd been just like every other idiot, turning towards the warmth...

"What?"

"You... you could've said something. If you'd told me, I wouldn't have asked you to..."

"Right, yes, I was so willingly going to volunteer a confession of virginity to the Most Eligible Raging Stud of the year," Harold answered. He could hear his own voice-- strident and mocking. Why was he so _angry?_ It felt good though, it felt safe, to be on the offensive. Much better than the alternative. "And I _did_ say no. You wouldn't let it go."

Nathan sighed. Nathan was long-suffering. It was probably a major part of why they were still room-mates, let alone friends. He heard Nathan's bed creak as Nathan threw himself down on it and for a moment had a brief and vicious desire to mention the magazine, to throw his knowledge of it in Nathan's face and see if _that_ would break Nathan's saintly calm and make him feel as exposed and pathetic as Harry himself did right now. 

He recoiled from the impulse after entertaining it for a few seconds too long. No. That would be wrong. That would be crossing a line that Nathan might, indeed, not be able to accept the way he'd accepted Harry's dysfunctional sleep schedule and compulsory fits of cleaning and flat refusal to ever talk about anything personal and his appropriating most of the flat surfaces in their dorm room for electronics in various states of assembly. 

"Well, I'm sorry. I guess I better call the bet off," said Nathan, and some of Harold's anger drained away despite his attempt to hold onto it. Damn Nathan and his willingness to so easily apologize, as if that fixed everything, and damn Nathan's indifference to the money he was going to lose. Harold flicked off the soldering iron-- it was stupid to pretend he was still working-- and set it down out of the way. Then he rubbed at his face. 

Regardless of his sexual experience or lack thereof, there were still seven hundred dollars on the line for him, and three for Nathan, and all of the original reasons he'd agreed to the bet still held.

"No," he sighed. "Don't. Not yet. Just because I don't know what I'm doing doesn't mean I can't learn. It's not like it's rocket science." Technically, he would be a lot more at his ease if it _were_ rocket science.

Nathan gave a little snort, maybe thinking something just along those lines. "...well, if you're sure..."

"I _said_ I'd do it." Harold pinched at the bridge of his nose, pushing up his glasses. "Can we not argue this."

"Alright," Nathan said affably. Harold risked a glance over his shoulder at his friend. Nathan was on his back, hands laced behind his head, staring up thoughtfully at the ceiling, one foot tapping in the air as he pondered their dilemma.

Harold sighed, then stared back at the Altair's innards. He was going about this all wrong, he supposed-- he didn't need to _experience_ a blowjob, just compile a list of the conditions he needed to duplicate. Moisture, yes, so any electronics involved would need a layer of waterproof material between them and, uh, the moisture, and...

"You know..." said Nathan. He craned his head over his shoulder. Nathan was still staring at the ceiling. 

"Yes?"

"Well-- I've got some friends... they're _nice_ , Harry, real sweet, and Janet kinda thinks you're cute, she asks about you sometime, I bet you could--"

It took a few seconds to process what Nathan was saying and as soon as it clicked all the anger came rushing right back, hot and white and he'd shoved his chair back from the desk and was on his feet without having given his body permission to move.

"Your _solution_ is to get one of your girlfriends to blow me? God _dammit,_ Nathan!"

Nathan blinked at him, his foot freezing mid-bob. Harold felt curiously detached from his body, like he was watching himself shout from a distance, yet also extremely conscious of his shaking hands, his shallow breathing.

"You just found out I've never had sex and being the _nice guy_ you are, you generously decide to see if you can't arrange a _pity fuck_ for me?"

"Har--"

" _Jesus Christ_ , Nathan-- does it even occur to you I haven't had sex because I don't _want_ to? That I'm not _ashamed_ of that, just because everyone else seems to think I should be? I don't _want_ to just stick my dick in somebody I barely know and don't care about in order t-to mark off some sort of, some sort of-- primitive check-box of what men are supposed to do!" 

Nathan was staring at him like a hunter who'd suddenly realized the deer had a bazooka. "Harry--"

He left the room before Nathan could say anything more, before his anger made him try and speak again and devolve into incoherency. He moved blindly down the hall, away from their dorm room, away from Nathan, knowing he was attracting stares from the other students he pushed past in his urge to get out, away, away, away-- away from his own raw emotions and their frightening intensity. 

****

He didn't see Nathan for three days. This was intentional. He had long since memorized the schedule for Nathan's classes, and knew the route by which the other man migrated between the campus buildings.

He didn't go to his own classes. They were laughable anyway and he didn't particularly care about his grades, since none of the classes he was officially enrolled in were really relevant to his interests. 

It was pretty easy to avoid Nathan, to chart his returns to the dormitory when Nathan wasn't there, to grab changes of clothes and anything else he needed. He slept on the couch in the Tech Model Railroad Club, dozing off to the sound of impassioned arguments about circuitry that usually went on well into the early morning hours. The others there knew him to be one of them even if he wasn't enrolled in any of the computer classes; he was accepted, and wasn't even the strangest among them. 

He went out for lunch with Marvin Minsky, the professor on campus he most respected, because he might not ever have the chance again-- Harold was giving serious thought to leaving MIT, to scrapping Harold Wren as he had the name he'd been born under and also the name he'd used after running away from home. 

He could go somewhere else. Stanford was tempting, the SAIL lab-- Minsky would probably be willing to write him a letter of recommendation, which he could alter to reflect whatever name he applied to Stanford under-- and he could be someone else, start over, be somebody new a third time. There was a lot of freedom in that. A lot of safety too. This time he would be more careful. 

There would be no Nathan, nobody around whom he'd make stupid mistakes, nobody who would ever make him upset or angry or defensive. 

He talked theories-of-the-mind and theories-of-computers with Minsky for two hours, because they both lost track of time, and when an upperclassman jogged up to their table out of breath to inform the professor he was twenty minutes late to his own lecture Minsky swore and then fixed Harold with a glare and informed him that he had better see Harold in one of his classes next semester.

He lied and said _of course, Professor Minsky_ , and walked around the math building for the rest of the afternoon, sitting in hallways next to open doors and listening to droning lectures on quantum states and probability.

He liked MIT. He liked being here. He liked the nexus of so many brilliant people in one place, so very different from how his intellect had marked him _freakish_ as a child and garnered looks of confused distrust-- here his mind was admired, and challenged, and met by other minds that could equal and even surpass him on occasion.

He didn't want to leave. 

But Nathan was here, and Nathan probably wasn't going to obligingly switch colleges somewhere else, so he supposed he'd better. 

He slipped back into the dorm room on the fourth day-- clothes were clothes and most of his books could be replaced but he damn well wanted his Altair-- at an hour when Nathan was having _International Business Management_ , 10:30-11:45 am, on the third floor of a building a ten minute walk away. 

The door shut behind him. Harold took a deep breath. His things were untouched on his side of the room. The Altair would need to be partially disassembled in order to be packed back up.

He was hunting a screwdriver when Nathan tackled him.

This, Harold thought, was kind of overkill, since a firm hand on his shoulder could probably have sufficiently kept him from getting past the six-foot-two bulk of Nathan Ingram (star football player), but then, Nathan didn't do things by halves either. 

He communicated this with a well-articulated "Uhhhfnhh!" as Nathan bowled him to the floor and pinned him there, staring down at him grimly.

"You are a real pain in the ass to be friends with sometimes, you know that, Harry?"

"Ghn-- get-- off-- me--"

"Hell no. Not until I know you're gonna _listen_ to me say my bit. You want to scamper off like a squirrel after that, well shit, I won't stop you, but you're gonna listen first whether you like it or not."

They glared at each other. Finally Harold nodded. Nathan nodded too, a short jerk of his chin, and let him up.

Harold rubbed at his ribs and edged back into a corner, giving Nathan an accusing look.

"You're supposed to be in class."

"You've ditched all of _yours_ for three days, I reckoned I could do the same."

Harold crossed his arms. "Say whatever it is you're going to say."

"Sit on down."

"No."

Nathan's jaw worked a little bit. Harold wondered distantly if he'd ever actually seen Nathan angry before. That geniality and country-boy smile went away. Actually, Nathan looked a little bit like his father right now. 

"Fine," Nathan muttered, and crossed his arms much like Harold was doing. "Fine. Stand then, I don't give a damn. I'm trying to tell you I'm _sorry_ , you know."

"By tackling me?"

"Well shit, Harry! You did a ghost on me, for all I know you're planning on running away right now."

Harold guiltily looked at the window. Nathan stared, then sighed. 

"Jesus, you are, aren't you. Hell is wrong with you?"

"...this is your apology?"

Nathan sighed again and dropped down onto the chair in front of Harold's desk, broad shoulders slumping. "No. Shit. I don't know. Look, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Harold scowled from his corner at Nathan's wording. "I am not _five years old._ "

"Then stop acting like you are! Yeah, I said some dumb shit and you got your panties in a bunch, so what, you're gonna just _leave?_ Who the hell does that? That ain't what friends do, Harold. Or are we not friends now, is that it?"

"What's it _matter_ to you," Harold rejoined, feeling his face flushing again. "You've got plenty of 'friends' who'll be such on your terms, why do you care if I leave?"

"Oh Jesus H. Christ," Nathan responded, throwing his hands up at the ceiling with an imploring look. He heaved a gusty sigh, as if asking the universe how he was supposed to deal with one Harold Wren, which Harold found irritating. He was an extremely rational person. Everyone else wasn't.

"Harry," Nathan said. "Harry, I _didn't mean to make you feel bad,_ alright? 'm _sorry_. And this is where you say, alright, Nathan, I forgive you sayin' dumb shit, and we get back to being friends. That's _how this works._ "

Harold said nothing, his shoulders pressed back against the corners of the small room, suspicion tightening his entire body. Nathan leaned forward a little in the seat, his long face expressive, painfully open. 

" _Harold,_ " he said, "I don't know what the hell you're running from, and I won't ask, but you don't gotta run from _me_ , okay?"

The walls were so solid and unyielding behind him. He couldn't back away from Nathan's face, or his words. Harold bit his lip, and then nodded, once. 

It _would_ be nice if he didn't have to pack up the Altair.

Nathan gave him a little nod in answer, a half-smile that was uncertain, which Nathan's smiles never were. Harold let out a breath he wasn't sure he'd been holding and watched Nathan echo the gesture.

"So..." said Nathan. 

Harold jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. "Can we assume I said the forgiveness bit or do I have to say that part aloud."

Nathan blinked, then snorted. "...I'll tell you what, you don't have to say you forgive me if you tell me you're sorry for calling me an animal in heat."

"—what? I didn't... call you that--"

"Raging Stud. And you implied the other."

Harold ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't.... I don't think that you're..."

Nathan glanced down, studied the tips of his shoes. "Look. Harry. I've been thinking about what you said. And you know, you're right. It's a load of bullshit that everyone thinks you gotta get laid all the time to count for shit as a guy. You're not wrong about that."

He looked up from the floor to Harold's face. "And I guess you've gotta get sick of hearing about it too from all sides. But... it goes both ways. I don't like feeling like you think I'm running around ruled by my dick, or that I'm stupid or something because I _do_ like having sex. Some of us just, you know, like it more than others. Can't that be okay too?"

That crack on the ceiling tiles was still there. Harold studied it. No north star clear among all those little dots... Was it really so simple? Did the equations come out that nicely and neatly, did you just say _Sorry_ to each other and... and that fixed it?

"Yes," he said finally, in a small voice. "I guess it can. I'm... I'm sorry, Nathan. I don't-- I don't think you're an animal. Or stupid. Really. I don't. You're... you're the smartest friend I've got, honestly."

Nathan's answering smile was blinding. "Smarter than your friends in the railroad club?"

"They're my... colleagues. They're not my friends. Um. That's pretty much just you."

Nathan rocked the chair back off its feet, grinning, grinning. "Shoot, so I'm the smartest in a pool of one? You sure know how to make a guy feel special."

Harold groaned, and chucked the screwdriver at Nathan, who caught it and laughed.

****

Nathan offered again to drop the bet and eat the cost; Harold put his foot down and said absolutely not. It was oddly somehow less intimidating now, although he still had no desire whatsoever to attempt another round with Betty Jean, or a replacement. 

So instead he was sitting here, the day after they had made up, with a notebook and questions and a previously unknown phenomenon: a blushing Nathan Ingram. 

"—I just don't know how to describe it, okay?" Nathan said with what Harold was going to privately call a 'flail' of his hands. He was not used to Nathan flailing, so this was extremely fascinating.

"You don't have to compose a _sonnet_ , Nathan, I just need some general idea of what we're trying to duplicate mechanically."

Nathan was very red. (Harold resisted the urge to say _SEE? Not so easy to think about it now, is it?_ )

"Hot," he said finally. "I mean hot temperature-wise. And, uh, suction. The-- the suction is-- uh-- an important-- part-- of things."

"I think I can extrapolate all of that on my own, human body temperature and suction, check. You know, for as much importance as people seem to place on oral sex ,you're not very good at describing it."

Nathan made a noise like a deflating tire, shifting around at his own desk. "Harrryy.... it's not that easy... look-- look, you-- well, you--" (he waggled one hand up and down a few times) "--right?"

Harold was pretty sure he knew what that gesture intended, but feigning ignorance seemed to be the more entertaining course of action judging by Nathan's discomfort so far. "I what?"

Nathan was _really_ red. "You-- I mean, you _do_ jerk off, right?"

Harold debated how to answer that. It was a subtle revenge on Nathan's part, even if Nathan didn't know that the question made his thoughts involuntarily fly to the magazine hiding in Nathan's bed. Well. Great, now he was blushing too.

"I'm not _dead_ from the waist down, Nathan, just less... less frequently... interested."

"So that's a yes?"

"...yes, that's a yes."

"Okay. Okay. Well. Then. You know. Rhythm. There's gotta be a rhythm to it."

"Well, I am not building hydraulic motion into this; I think the users of our hypothetical device can push it on and off their penises themselves."

Nathan laughed, if you could describe that strangled wheeze into his hand a laugh. Harold arched a brow as Nathan doubled over, coughing and snorting.

"Funny?"

"Y-you-- call-- it-- penis--"

Oh for the love of-- Harold leaned back in his chair, rolled his pen against his palm, and sighed. "Yes, that is what it's _called."_

"No, that's what _doctors_ call a dick, Harry-- look, that is not any kind of sexy and if you're gonna build a sex toy you gotta call it a dick. Diiiiiick. Say dick."

"No."

"You can say cock instead." Nathan was still red but waggling his eyebrows at him now. Harold rolled his eyes in turn. 

"Can we return to the topic at hand."

This set off a round of actual howling laughter from Nathan. Harold scowled, tapping the end of his pen against the desk; what was so funny?

"—topic-- at-- hand--" Nathan said between sniggers, and made the jerk-off gesture again. Harold groaned and put his head into his hand while Nathan collapsed into red-faced laughter in his chair. Harold shook his head; Nathan kept laughing.

After twenty seconds Harold's lips twitched and he murmured, "...now don't _choke_ , Nathan..."

Nathan sputtered, gave him a disbelieving look, and really lost it. This time Harold joined in, putting his forearms down on the desk and burying his face into them. For a minute the room was full of nothing but their snorting, helpless mirth. Apparently this was the appeal of the locker-room jokes he'd never gotten until now, Harold thought.

Eventually they both managed to get it under control. Harold slid his glasses off, wiped his red face with his shirtsleeve, while Nathan's snickers slowly petered out and he rubbed at his ribs.

"God, this is _dumb,_ " Harold wheezed. Nathan nodded, and hiccuped. 

They were silent for a little bit. Harold tried to catch his breath. Nathan was sprawled in his chair, looking at the ceiling; from the corner of his eye Harold saw him open his mouth, then shut it. Then open it again, and shut it, and then a third time--

"Harry—" And only because he was watching so closely, curious as to what Nathan wasn't managing to say, only because he was watching and saw Nathan's Adam's apple jump and the flick of his tongue over his lips, did he realize that Nathan was nervous, because his voice was very casual, very light: "Harry, if you want to give it a try, we could."

Harold clutched his pen tight in his fingers. Was Nathan suggesting what he thought he was? Yes. Yes, that he was sure of. He could and did second-guess many things but-- he knew what was being said here. What Nathan was offering. What Nathan was admitting to.

Somewhere there were feet in the halls, somewhere a door slammed. The room was very quiet except for their own breathing.

Nathan licked his lip again, eyes never wavering from the ceiling. His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. "You don't gotta. I just thought you might want to feel it yourself, it's nice, really. Like if you're curious. You know. If you want."

He took shallow breaths, through his nose; his mouth felt suddenly dry. He was waiting for the automatic revulsion, for thoughts of the stupid cartoon mouth or just the more general distaste he had always felt when trying to envision himself doing anything sexual with someone else. 

No, no revulsion. A nervous flutter in his belly. His face still felt hot from the earlier bout of laughter. His mouth felt dry. 

Seconds ticked by. He saw Nathan swallow again.

"Forget about it, it wasn't anything--"

"Yes." He said the word before he could change his mind. Nathan froze, then carefully lowered his head and looked over at him. 

"Um... are you sure?"

"No," Harold answered, "but if you ask me too many times I'm probably going to say no so you'd better … you'd better not. Ask me. Too many times."

"Oh." Nathan's eyes were searching his face. "Okay."

Harold became aware that the pen was in danger of breaking in his fingers. He swallowed, with difficulty, then set the pen down very carefully on the desk. 

"Do you-- do I need to-- be on the bed, or..." It wasn't what he wanted to ask. He wanted to ask, _You've done this before? Who? Who did you do this with?_

"Bed's... good," Nathan said, and the voice you could usually hear across the room had dropped to a hoarse whisper. 

Harold nodded and got up from the desk. The bed had never seemed quite so far away. He reached it, sat down on the edge, and looked to Nathan, who was still sitting in his chair like he wasn't entirely sure what to do next.

It was funny-- sort of-- he'd never have considered Nathan's face to be anything but open before-- but the rush of emotions flickering across Nathan's still-pink cheeks right now made Harold realize that Nathan's easy smile was... a mask too, just as much as any he maintained. Right now Nathan-- confident, bright, admired, popular Nathan-- was wide-eyed and exposed. Harold watched him get to his feet like a man in a dream.

Nathan was risking a lot, Harold realized. Nathan was risking his secret, trusting Harold with it. Had he ever given Nathan back even a fraction of that trust? He swallowed.

He didn't know if he could tell Nathan his secrets. But he could give him back Nathan's own secret, at least. It didn't seem right not to.

"Nathan," he said softly as Nathan took two steps towards him, and Nathan's eyes darted up towards him. Harold bit his lower lip. "I'm not one of the men in _Physique Pictorial._ "

Nathan froze. Color drained from his face. 

"You knew?"

Harold worried his caught lip with his teeth, and nodded. "Sorry," he whispered. "I was looking for... uh.... something to..." Helplessly, he made the wobbly hand gesture.

It broke the moment. Nathan blinked, then hiccuped, then burst out laughing all over again. 

It took them longer to stop this time. Harold's eyes were leaking and his sides hurt, but Nathan had moved in front of him now, kneeling there, and he had his hands on Harold's knees, surprisingly warm through the fabric of his trousers, and the laughter drained away before the look in Nathan's eyes. 

Nathan reached for his belt-- looked the question up at him-- and Harold closed his eyes and nodded.

He kept his hands flat on the sheets, one on each side of his thighs. Nathan undid his belt. Nathan unbuckled his trousers. Nathan's knuckles and fingers seemed large and clumsy and he could hear Nathan breathing, shallow, shallow. Fast. 

Someone slammed a door in the hall, yelled down the corridor. Distant. Meaningless. 

Nathan's fingers brushed his cock through his underwear and Harold jumped despite himself, eyes jerking back open. 

"Um-- okay?" Nathan asked from down there, voice shaky.

"Y-yes. Sorry. Just-- it-- yes."

"Alright—" Nathan's hands tugged at his underwear, and the air seemed cool on his groin except for the little whuff of air that he realized suddenly was _Nathan_ , was Nathan breathing on his skin, shaky and warm. Harold swallowed and leaned his head back to study the familiar ceiling, to run his eyes over the crack, to envision Cygnus and the Southern Cross in the dots while Nathan's thick fingers fumbled his cock free from his briefs. 

He caught his lip between his teeth again. Nathan's fingers trembled, and Nathan's breath was so noisy, so fast... It tickled against his cock. Harold dug his fingers down into the sheets to keep from pulling away. 

And then Nathan's tongue, it must have been his tongue, wet, warm-- touched his skin down there where nothing but his own hands had ever touched, and he jerked again. 

Nathan pulled back. "Is that-- I mean, do you like that or--"

"I don't _know_ ," Harold half-snapped, heart racing with nervousness. "It-- I-- do it again and I'll tell you when I figure it out."

Nathan arched a brow up at him-- then grinned. "Okay." And he did it again.

Harold stared down at the top of Nathan's head, at the blond hair sliding every which way. He forgot about the ceiling and the crack and the constellations. Nathan's tongue was moving along his penis-- _cock_ , he imagined Nathan's voice say, _diiiick, Harry, your dick_ \-- and it felt-- warm. Warm in little trembles, quivering in from where Nathan's tongue touched his skin to lodge the warmth somewhere in his belly. 

Nathan had done this before for someone. He was sure of it. Who? The questions from earlier crowded back in. Harold's mind suggested the muscled athletes of the magazine, encounters in locker rooms, showers. Had Nathan knelt before a fellow football player? He didn't know enough to know the names of the positions. He suddenly wished he did, just so he could imagine it-- to know what was meant by linebacker or quarterbacker or all those other foreign words-- to know who might have been the first person Nathan had touched with his tongue like this.

And who had first done it for Nathan? Questions, questions...

Nathan's tongue kept touching him. Circling under his cock, licking at his glans... Nathan brushed some spot that made him inhale sharply, blinking; Nathan glanced up at him from beneath the drift of his hair, something _smug_ gleaming in his eyes, and did it again. 

"That-- that feels good," Harold admitted shakily. Nathan's head tilted to the side and he licked and Harry stared down at the line of Nathan's strong jaw and tanned neck. There was a fast throbbing there in Nathan's neck, _the carotid artery,_ and Harold swallowed and unclenched his fingers from the sheet (when had he grabbed them?) to reach out and touch it. 

Nathan's eyes fixed on him again when he did that. Darker than normal. Harold's mind supplied information like _dilated pupils_ ; his fingers supplied _warm, warm, he's sweating, his heart is doing at least ninety..._

His own was too, fast as a sparrow's in the hand. There wasn't enough oxygen in the room.

Then Nathan put his mouth over the first inch of Harold's cock.

Hot, Nathan had said. Suction, Nathan had said.

"Yes," Harold said stupidly, staring down at the sight of a part of himself inside Nathan's mouth. 

Nathan's mouth curved around him like a parabola, like a completed circuit, like a perfect square. These were nonsense things to think, he knew, but his mind suggested them all the same. Things fit. His blood hummed. Nathan licked again, and slid more of him into his mouth, which felt good, and Harold counted the drum of Nathan's pulse beneath his fingers, fascinated, captivated. 

He knew what his body was doing. His pulse was accelerating and blood was rushing to his groin and away from his head, which was part of why he felt slightly dizzy; the other reason being that he was breathing at an elevated rate. He knew these facts. And that Nathan was stimulating the bundles of nerves in his groin too, that that little hot surge that wired straight into his belly was probably his frenulum, that his cock's current stiffness was the result of millions of years of evolution designing a reward system for reproduction. He knew all this. 

It didn't seem very important. 

Nathan was wonderful to look at. He was sweating, his golden hair stuck to his skin at his temples, the base of his neck. His eyes were half-way shut and his head moved, and his mouth moved, and the tempo they were setting was a sine curve, _up_ down, _up_ down, a languid undulation drifting back and forth across the x-axis and on the _up_ s Harold felt his toes curl and his hips rise off the bed.

Nathan didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. His mouth was busy. Harold wondered if he was supposed to talk, to say things, but all he could think of was the Fibonacci sequence: sensations being added to create a spiral that was suddenly far greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one wasn't much, Nathan's tongue on his cock wasn't much, but one plus two was three and three plus two was five, and next came eight and then thirteen and five iterations later you were at a hundred and forty-four and the spiral was expanding ever larger: Nathan's tongue lapping wet along the underside of his shaft, and Nathan's mouth encompassing most of his cock now, and the sine-curve compressed into a faster tempo by the swift bobbing of Nathan's head-- it was all conspiring, to undo him, to make him lose track, and stop thinking, and it was doing an excellent job. 

_Noradrenaline,_ he thought hazily. _Dopamine. My alpha-receptors are being flooded and overwhelmed._

_Also, Nathan's sucking my dick._

When he came, he grabbed Nathan's hair, barely aware he was doing so. Blond sweaty strands twined around his fingers, digging in, writing a texture-memory into his skin. He didn't see it, his eyes half back in his head and the lenses of his glasses fogged up, but he felt it all the same.

****

"...so... so that's a blowjob."

"Well. Uh. Yeah. Yeah that's... the... the gist of it... mnh..."

"...are you... okay?"

"Yes. Yep. Fine."

"...what are you _doing?_ "

"… …. well... what's it look like I'm … doin', Harry?"

"Oh. _Oh._ "

"Yeah."

"Do you need a Kleenex?"

"...not _yet_..."

"… do you need a hand?"

"SweetJesusyesplease, here let me show you how--"

****

They were lying on Harold's bed. Harold's eyes were tracing the cracked ceiling tile, and making constellations from the holes once more. Gemini. Taurus. He couldn't make a suitable Draco from the dots he was seeing. Maybe there were better ones from Nathan's bed.

They weren't touching, not exactly. Alright, Nathan's foot and leg was against his own, and Nathan's shoulder too, but the bed wasn't big. They weren't locked in embrace or kissing wildly or any of the things Harold thought people traditionally filled their time with after sex. This was a relief. 

It was in fact possible that Nathan had fallen asleep, Harold thought, but then the mattress shifted and Nathan reached out a hand to poke him in the ribs.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Nathan's hair was in his eyes. Harry wondered how he couldn't find that annoying. "...what are you thinking about?"

Harold hesitated. There was probably a correct answer to this, in that great answer section to the textbook of Life that had, so far, stubbornly eluded him. "….well..."

"Harry... you can tell me. It's alright," Nathan murmured, and his face intruded further into Harold's field of vision, earnest eyes and encouraging smile. "What's on your mind?"

Alright then. Harold shrugged. "Polyurethane."

"….what?"

"I think I could probably mold something usable out of polyurethane. I need to talk to Brian Czjowski though-- he's a chemistry major-- but it's very formable, it's hypoallergenic and it's resistant to bacteria--"

"Harry."

"...yes?"

"Please shut on up before my ego takes a critical hit. You don't got to tell me it was the best sex of your life or anything but pretend to be deeply moved by it for a little while, will you?"

Harold shut on up. He studied the acoustic tile sky, and after thinking about it, he crept his hand across the sheet toward Nathan's larger one. Tangled their fingers together. Like a completed circuit; like a perfect square.

"Best sex of my life, Nathan," he said softly. "...in... you know... a pool of one."

Nathan beat him with a pillow, and Harold accepted that as something he probably deserved.


	3. (epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (an epilogue, as requested by guilty-pleasure-personofinternet on tumblr)

“So you think it’s done?”

Harold took a deep breath. “Good as it’s going to get. Yes. I mean… yes.”

“Okay.” Nathan echoed his deep breath and took the box from Harold. They sat in an awkward silence for ten seconds.

“Well.” Nathan’s cheeks were tinged pink. “I guess I’d better— test it. You think?”

Harold nodded, bit his lip. Two false starts and then he managed: “Can I watch?”

Nathan’s eyes darted back to his, and after a moment, crinkled with wicked humor. Harold blushed too.

“Purely for science, of course.”

“Oh, of course.”


End file.
